The present invention relates to a spot registration system, and in particular, to a spot registration system for registering a spot or a place or a locality to a mobile information system such as a car navigation system or a portable mobile terminal.
In a car navigation system used in the past, there is provided a function to register a position such as a place frequently visited or owner""s own home by manual operation from map screen. FIG. 10 shows a functional block diagram of a conventional type spot registration system. The user sets a spot to be registered in advance, and a route to a selected spot as destination can be searched by easy operation and procedure by simply selecting the spot from a list of the registered spots without the need of searching the destination from the map screen. In particular, when the position of owner""s own home is registered by differentiating it from the other spots, a route to the home can be searched by a single button operation. It is very convenient because this is a function to be used frequently.
In the conventional type car navigation system, however, the operation to register position of user""s own home is not very easy to perform for a user, who uses the car navigation system for the first time. Also, for the other spots to be registered, there have been problems in that registration must be made through selection of a spot by putting consideration on the purpose to use the registered spot.
To solve the above problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide a system, which can automatically register information on a spot or a place or a locality to a mobile information system such as a car navigation system.
To attain the above object, the spot registration system for registering position to a mobile information system according to the present invention comprises position detecting means for detecting position of the system, position storage means for storing the detected position, position recognizing means for recognizing a spot to be registered according to position storage information obtained from the position storage means, and means for registering the recognized spot.
The spot registration system as described here is not limited to a system physically enclosed in a housing, but it also means a system, which is dispersed in a plurality of housings for each of the means incorporated, whereby these housings are connected with each other via wired or wireless system and these serve as a spot registration system as a whole.
With the arrangement as described above, position information obtained from the position detecting means is analyzed to estimate the normally stationed spot of the system or the place frequently visited, and the position of the normally stationed spot or the visiting place can be automatically registered.